After the technology for creating so-called Color-Key pictures became more and more practical, more and more images produced in this way were found in the windows of photographers. The classics in usual portfolio are certainly the colored flower, the red lips in the portrait, the red lantern - as the only color areas in the otherwise black and white image. The trials and tribulations certainly include baby pictures, in which only the romper appears in color ... Unfortunately, such compositions have rather damaged this powerful design technique, but when used correctly, it offers many possibilities for adding additional properties to a recording.
Of course, there is also the possibility to highlight other "key colors" or to color certain small areas in the otherwise black and white picture - as a small surprise for a second glance. There is the woman, who is sitting "in color" in front of the Stockholm Opera, the young couple on the Kamo River in Kyoto or the flossis of the artist Rosalie in Düsseldorf's Medienhafen.
If the photo already tells a good story, the color scheme can add another facet to the suspense. We then no longer speak of photographs, the purpose of which is to reproduce motifs as lifelike as possible, e.g. is for documentation, but of images based on photographic material as the result of an artistic act. From this point of view, color key pictures should ultimately be assessed.
The creation of color key images is not very complicated thanks to programs such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop and, with a little practice, does also not require a lot of time. The social media offer good instruction videos so that there is no need to present the production technology here.
